The declining vertical nobody wanted to fix became the company's #1 revenue driver. Here's how.
Crisis is the ultimate clarifier. When something's failing, you have permission to question everything. I inherited a struggling inside sales vertical and refused to let it stay broken.
The first move wasn't cost-cutting or layoffs. It was diagnosis. I wanted to understand why it was failing: Was it capability? Was it the market? Was it leadership? Was it compensation? Once I knew, I could act.
Turns out, it was a combination of factors, but the core issue was that the team had lost confidence in leadership. People were leaving. Those staying were going through the motions. Fixing it meant rebuilding trust first, then strategy second.
Within a year, it became the highest-performing vertical. The same people who were disengaged became champions. They just needed leadership that believed in them.
Crisis doesn't kill businesses — poor leadership during crisis does.